Maxed out launch, Dayton, Ohio - August 8, 2020 - Part 2

  Yeah, more to this Max Saturday than meets the eye.  I got tired of looking at the open post on my computer, so I made the executive decision to split it into two parts.  I came pretty close to hitting the halfway point without even trying.

The next Max to chase glory would be the 2007 Estes rerelease.  Talk about a no brainer.  Surprised it took as long as it did to bring it around again.  Still the same classic lines as before.  A decal quibble or two, but overall the same great kit.  I felt like I had to have an actual, official Max in the fleet, especially considering how beat up my clone had become.

This one left the pad going in the same direction as the previous flight, but stayed on our side of the flightline.  Ejected as expected at apogee, then began heading quickly away from us.  Some were thinking that it was heading for the trees on the side of the road, but it appeared to be dropping at a rate that would bring it down well short of anything approaching trouble.

 Or so I thought.  I'm sure I'm not the only one whose rockets tend to find trouble no matter how well hidden.  I was surrounded by green as I stood at the landing zone.  Green everywhere except for that tiny strip of gravel.  Heavy, heavy sigh.....

The Excelsior Goony Max flew next.  This was a very early build for review back in the EMRR days.  I treed the first one, low hanging fruit, but far enough out of reach that I'd need to come back the next day with a pole to snag it.  When I got back the next day, someone else had done just that.  Phred didn't  like that and sent me another decal sheet so I could build it and maybe not lose it this time.  With that being the plan, I opted for a 24mm motor mount instead of the 18mm that came in the Baby Bertha kit.  (This came as a big surprise in a Goony drag race at NARAM one year.)

This rocket gets it done.  It's somewhat overpowered, but the monster fins make it very forgiving at the same time.  This flight looked like trouble almost as soon as it left the rod.  It windcocked right at a fairly extreme angle.  We were set up fairly close to the north edge of the field and the Goony Max looked like it was going to easily clear the road, and actually appeared to.  At ejection it began drifting back toward us, but at a rate that appeared too lazy to actual make it.  Then the wind picked up and it began to move more swiftly back our way.  In the end it landed surprisingly close to the entrance, easily my longest walk on the day.

Sticking with the Excelsior theme, next flight would be the Fat Max, the Estes Fat Boy based bird.  I'd long since run out of my Fat boy stash, but another flyer was divesting himself of low power kits and had one available.  I built it while watching a movie with my wife.

Fat Max was another that I forgot to take a glamour shot of.  Too bad.  It's a great looking decal set.  Flight was on a D12-5 and followed a similar path to the Goony Max, although not as severe an arc to the right.  After topping out near 1000', ejection came as it tipped over and Fat drifted over the flightline, coming to a soft rest in the thick grass behind us.

Next max in the lineup was the E12-6 powered Der Big Red Max, which hadn't flown since NARAM in 2013.  This project was a no-brainer, perfect for me.  In 2007 when Estes reintroduced Der Red Max, I bought two with the express intent of building one as a DBRM.  I also swapped out the 18mm motor mount for the 24mm mount and installed the longer engine hook to accept the E motors.

No doubt this one was the straightest flight of the day.  An absolute arrow to 1200'+, winding up as a dot in the sky with a smoke trail.  Very Goblin-esque.  Appeared to eject just as it slowed, then dropped straight down to recover behind the pads.  If it gets any better than that, I missed the memo.

The next three flights would be StickerShock Max variants, starting with the newest, Der Blue Max.  I'd finished this the previous week and hadn't initially cared for the blue I chose for the nose cone.  Still not my favorite feature of this bird, but it's growing on me.

This had originally been a Max without a paint scheme and I'm not sure how that happened.  It was a well built D motor body and had been finished in a metallic orange, so it's possible that I'd built it with the intention of making it the Orange Max, only to go with a more traditional orange for that decal set.  Instead I sprayed the body with a coat of silver, then candy blue metallic.  I was really happy with the finished product.  It shows off the StickerShock decals nicely.

D12-5 flight.  Followed the same arrow straight path as the DBRM to around 1000', and looked good doing it.  Ejection occurred as it slowed down and it recovered nicely in the grass behind the pads.

At this point I was really starting to question the wisdom of attempting this on an asphalt parking lot.  In August.  I was starting to drag, and I still had three Maxes to go.  Not willing to be a buttercup, I grabbed the Dark Max, another StickerShock product.  This decal set was bought in a two-for-one sale along with the Orange Max.  An excellent deal.  The Dark Max had a 24mm motor mount, and flew on an E12-6.  Definitely a high altitude bird.

No windcocking here, at least not that we could see.  The Dark Max left the pad heading straight.  For the sun.  I assume the altitude was impressive, but all I saw was nothing.  I scanned the skies for a parachute, but saw nothing.  I had no idea where to begin looking, but since the previous flights had all recovered pad left, I headed out that way.  I'd been smart enough to use a small nylon chute for this flight, so I hoped my forethought would be enough for the Dark Max to not reach the road.  As luck would have it, I was heading straight for it.  There were two baseball diamonds built back to back to meet in the outfields.  The Dark Max split the difference and landed without drama in the no man's land between the opposing outfields.  I was never a power hitter, so it was good to clear the fence for a change.

It was nice to have the Stickershock Orange Max up next because I thought we might be able to see the flight, unlike the Dark Max.  The Orange Max drew the cluster card and would fly with a 2xC6-5 load.  And look good doing it.

Compared to the Dark Max flight, the Orange Max was a sedate walk in the park.  (Provided that the park was asphalt that was baking you slowly but thoroughly.)  A mostly straight flight that angled back over the flightline slightly, the Orange Max flew somewhere close to the 1000' mark, popped the chute perfectly at apogee, and drifted back across the field to the left, nowhere near the baseball field.

The Mega Red Max was supposed to be the penultimate flight of the day, but it didn't quite turn out that way.  Still, the G80-7 would be the largest of the day by a longshot.  There's always a lot of nerves involved in a project like this from start to finish, then flight to flight.  I don't trust myself working with epoxy, although I've gotten better with time.  Everything about the MDRM was epoxy once I got the Fin skins in place.  It was beyond sturdy, and had previously flown on an F50 on this same field, so I was fairly confident that it could survive the G motor.  Fairly.  Yeah.

The MDRM left the pad into the wind to the right, which was expected with those sail-like fins.  It made a slow climb to an estimated 750', tipped over, and popped the massive chute.  Absolutely no drama after all the drama.  Then again, I guess that's good.  Drama would likely leave a mark that wouldn't sand out.  It landed near the access road, but not close enough to cause a pucker.  Very much a carbon copy of the first flight on the F five years earlier, but quite a bit higher.  

At this point I could have called it all finished and dropped into the seat of the Toaster for a cold drink from the cooler, but while I was readying things for packing I found my missing super glue.  Thirty seconds later the broken fin on my Miniscule Max, a Mosquito-size BT-5 creation that was supposed to start the day, was fixed, loaded with a 1/2A3-2T, and on the way to the pads.

I swore I took an on-pad picture, but one has never appeared, and it's possible that I was so tired that I just thought I took it.  At any rate, it flew dead straight off the pad to 300ish feet.  I heard the ejection, but never saw a thing.  No one did, but someone said they thought they heard something hit over behind the cars, which is exactly where I found the Miniscule Max.  Now I was REALLY done, in every way.

In the final tally, I wound up flying 19 Max flights on the day, from motors ranging from 1/2A to G and everything in between.  Someone mentioned, too late, that if I'd made the last flight on a 1/4A I would have completed a 1/4A to G brace, a term I'd not heard since my QUARK days.  Would have been a cool nod back to the guys I don't seem to see anymore, but there's always my upcoming Goony launch.  I should be ready again in a few short years.

Dayton, Ohio - WSR launch - 10/24/20

 Saturday, October 24 would again find me in Dayton with the WSR crew.  As is my norm, I spent Friday evening getting my rockets prepped, flight cards filled out, etc.  This allowed me to leave as soon as I got up in the morning.  Theoretically, that is.  I still farted around enough to wind up being an hour or more late, but by the time I arrived only six flights had gone up, so I wasn't feeling that things had left me.  With no prep to do thanks to my Friday night work, I decided that my most recent project, an Estes Star Blazer upscale from an unremembered Hobby Lobby victim, would be my first flight of the day.

One might notice the careful lack of paint and decals.  In fact, one might notice the incomplete job of removing all of the sanding sealer.  One might be correct.  This seemingly simple project turned into a mini-monster at the sanding point.  One of the wings seemed to not want to allow me to exert any pressure as I sanded.  Turns out it was flimsily attached, the wood glue apparently not up to the task.  In short, it wiggled like a tooth in the mouth of a six year old.  Progress halted, glue was reapplied and a new fillet in place, but the repair happened during my prep session on Friday night.  When I picked it up on Saturday morning, all seemed fine, so in went the D12-5 and onto the ready pile it was dropped.

One might also notice that in my typical rush to finish a new build, I neglected to place the wings forward some on the body tube.  Didn't matter.  It was a wonderfully stable flight, windcocking slightly left blazing to what appeared to be just short of 1000'.  Or 500'.  I'm not a great judge of altitude from sea level.  Whatever, it screamed off the pad and reached an impressive height.  At ejection I realized that I'd made a mistake in not reefing the chute and it carried back across the flightline before landing well to our right out near the baseball fields.  I was pumped, and full of fatal confidence as we'll soon see.

Next up would be the TLP Anubis that I faked by looking at the picture on the TLP website and guessing my best.  I think my best was good enough.

I loved how it turned out, and even the cheap and dirty camo paint job turned out to my liking.  The Anubis was one of the "Launch Pad Originals", which seemed to be what I was drawn to when placing an order.  I only recently realized that this meant "something we dreamt up" and that no actual paint schemes would be able to be sourced.  Bully for me.

Loaded with an E12-6, I was looking for something like the Star Blazer flight with perhaps greater altitude.  That was exactly what I got, to a point.  Unfortunately the windcock to the left was also rather oddly paired with a flight path that took it back over the crowd.  Not aggressively so, but noticeably so.  Still, I had hopes that the small nylon chute would bring it down somewhere to the right of the Star Blazer landing spot, but still on the field.  It became cruelly obvious that this wasn't going to be the case.  Over the trees at the edge of our field, across the road, finally dropping somewhere behind the houses near what was once the eRockets building.  I began recon ops and was spotted by the homeowners, who graciously allowed me to look in the back yard for the missing rocket.  Huge yellow leaves covered the backyard grass, all of them the approximate size and color of the yellow parachute.  Once again I'd found the perfect camouflage for my rockets and now that I needed to spot one, I was left high and dry.  Final analysis was that the rocket likely went deeper into the trees than we thought and was hung up in one of them.  To say I was bummed is not coming close to the reality of the situation.  I really liked how this bird had come out.

Rethinking my situation, I decided that it might be wise to give extra thought to any further E12 flights.  Not that there wouldn't be more, I'd just think about it a lot longer.  I went lower with the next flight, my Estes Interceptor clone that hadn't been flown since NSL in 2007.  No idea why.

When I built this it was in the days when the parts didn't exist anywhere, but someone had the forethought to do a set of them in resin.  I jumped on them as soon as I saw them offered, and the details of the sale escape me.  The decals were an eBay buy and were the final hurdle, and I began cutting parts with gusto.  (Mmmm, gusto.)  I began putting it all together and when the time came, I mixed up some epoxy and attached the fin pods in one evening session.  If you were to look closely, you'd never know.  I was quite surprised at how authentic the silhouette was, and even the fact that the decals were slightly oversized didn't detract from my masterpiece.  Way cool, with extra gusto.

The C6-5 flight might have been better had it been a C6-3, (or even better, a C5-3).  As it was the Interceptor did the windcock to the left, then began heading down before the ejection charge fired.  From our vantage point it appeared that the rocket body then went through the parachute and pulled it inside out.  It fell somewhat quickly, swinging wildly.  I switched the camera back on and caught it coming in hot.

It struck the ground hard, and you could clearly see one of the pods break off.  Luckily the combination of basswood fins and resin parts meant that the weakest spot was the glue joint.  The repair should be made easily with minimal epoxy mixing.

For flight #4 I went low and slow, my Mega Goon Super Snooper on a C6-3.  I had a C5-3 with me, but no blue plugs.  Or so I thought.  I guess I could have asked around, but I was in flying frenzy mode and one makes do with what one has in flying frenzy mode.

This would be flight #42 in the career of my first big Goony, built back in the days when the Fat Boy was readily available on the shelves at Johnny's.  Man, do I miss the Fat Boy.  Man, do I miss Johnny's.  It's the only one of my Mega Goons not to be built with at least a 24mm motor mount, which makes it a natural for B6-4 Field.  At eRockets Field, it's kind of wasted.  The C6-3 struggled to get it off the pad, as you can tell by how many frames I caught of it clawing at the air.

It laboriously chugged to 300' or so on an ever-arcing flight path, surprisingly heading out toward the no-man's land of the soccer fields.  The soccer folks had hosted a large shortypants kickball tournament earlier in the month and had erected a cyclone fence to keep the privileged parent from being tempted to park on the football fields.  This was completely ineffective, and cost the organizers many thousands of dollars in damage to the football field because as you may know, soccer parents make their own rules, and no one tells them where to park.  The Snooper started out on the dark side of the fence, but swung back to our side on a chute that was more reef than actual chute.

My fifth flight would be the Red River Stratos on a C6-5.  Construction was finished, but I'd yet to do more than shoot a coat of primer on it.  This wouldn't stop me from giving it a shake down flight.

A slick looking, SST style bird, the Stratos is surprisingly light and I was almost tempted to try it on an A8-3 at B6-4 Field.  Circumstances didn't allow this, but it's a future possibility.  Sanding sealer and paint are also a future possibility.

The Stratos left the pad heading left and toward the soccer fields, jinking and twirling as if in a dogfight.  One of the spectators asked if the jinks and twirls could be attenuated by adding some forward fins, but was informed that they'd likely only make the problem worse.  The real truth is that the jinks and twirls were likely owed to my haphazard fin alignment skills, which are decidedly not mad.  As it was, the Stratos arced out over the forbidden zone, then rode the breeze back to our side of the field.  I see copious quantities of sanding in my future.

Flight #6 would be my long neglected Estes Ninja.  The Ninja was singularly responsible for my emergence as a BAR after I found it for sale at an Arlington, Texas hobby shop closing in 1994.  That one didn't survive the trip home, but when the bug bit hard in 2001, a Ninja was high on my list of rockets to find on eBay.

I've long been tempted to build another Ninja as an 18mm bird, but it admittedly flies just fine on 13mm power.  It had been prepped with an eye toward one of my B6-4 Field launches that never materialized a few weeks back, so it was an 1/2A3-4T flight.  This would be the first flight of the Ninja since 2004. 

Again, something of a wiggly flight path.  Also again, likely because of my mad alignment skillz or complete lack thereof.  Altitude was down, but up, reaching a respectable 250' and recovering right of the pads on a traditional crepe paper streamer.  I looked around my box for an A10 or A3, but since I had prepped the night before I hadn't packed much extra.  Next time for sure.

Our winds had shifted some, so I decided to go with my rather draggy Estes Protostar for flight #7.  This is more of a cornfield bird, but the E12 motor had been loaded since last winter, so I decided to chance it and fly.

The Protostar left the pad quickly and arced slightly to the left and behind us, almost a carbon copy of the ill-fated Anubis flight.  The saving grace of this flight was the weight of the bird, and that the winds had dropped some.

In the end all ended well.  The recovery walk was a long one, four baseball fields away.  I found the Protostar in deep left field in fair territory.  Warning track power.  Story of my life.

For my next trick I'd go both big and old.  The Estes Super Vega had been a Christmas present back in 1994 when my wife and sister in law snuck down to the Arlington hobby shop and did some early shopping for my brother in law and I.  I wound up with a Super Vega, a Greyhawk and a Hornet.  (The Hornet remains unbuilt.)  I started construction on the Super Vega, but finding time to build while riding herd on two kids who were under five was almost impossible.  It got moved to the storage area and subsequently broken.  When the time came to rebuild it, I decided to do it as a cluster.  Unflown since 2004, it had since been painted and decaled.  About time.

The 3x6-5 flight was kind of a pain to hook up, but that's the norm with clusters.  All three motors lit and it appeared to get hung up on the launch rod slightly.  Windcocking left as expected, it clawed its way to just about the 500' mark before deploying the chute.

It swung fairly wildly on the recovery descent, right back at us on the flightline.  (Close enough to smell the exhaust.)  It was almost caught before impact, but the excess shock cord allowed one of the leg pods to hit the ground, cracking it off.  All fixable and the next time I'm in the mood to cluster it should be ready.

Hey, it worked once, why not try it again since the clip whip is warmed up.  Flight #9 would be the other cluster in the box, the Astron Cobra.  It would be another 3xC6-5 flight.

Nothing hung up on this flight, and the Cobra left the pad quickly.  (It probably helped that it didn't have quite the fin area of the Super Vega.)  The flight topped out way higher than the Super Vega, appearing to be around 1000'.  After the initial expected curl to the left it began racing back toward us, but still quite high in the sky.  I again got that sinking feeling in my stomach as it neared the trees that fringe the road over that way.

Despite the earlier loss of the Anubis, not all my luck was bad on this day.  The Cobra cleared everything, coming in hot through the tree branches right next to the road.  And it stuck the landing.

Flight #10 would be something more sedate.  Ah, who am I kidding?  It would be an Estes Goblin on A D12-5.  Heavy duty altitude, but I felt okay about flying it because it was a streamer recovery bird.

And not just any old Goblin.  A Goblin painted with Allis Chalmers Persian Orange paint.  (You old Yahoos know the significance of rockets and tractor paint.)  The flight was as expected, leaving the pad quickly and heading left.  The flightpath took it out over the soccer fields, but it recovered to the right of the flightline on the good size of the fence.

A little sanity returned for flight #11, the mini engine Estes D.O.M. Top Secret.  This one had been loaded for B6-4 Field action and brought along as an afterthought with the small field 1/2A3-4T.  That was fine.  I needed an on-pad shot in full livery.

Unfortunately the Top Secret was beset by igniter issues, and by the time all was said and done I managed to miss the flight.  Decals by Sandman, btw.  Flight itself was as expected, topping out around 300' and recovering without damage despite a parawad recovery.

Next up would be a Custom Serval on a C6-5 for flight #12.  The Serval hadn't flown since 2013, and this and some online conversation about old Custom birds meant that it would get dragged along the road to 200.

Despite the tube fin reputation for squirrelly flights, the Serval was far and away the straightest, most stable flight of the day.  A very slight arc to the left and over the soccer field, then a perfect recovery to the right and in front of the flightline.

 

Also owing to the Custom chatter, I brought the Custom Lamprey along.  The Lamprey hadn't been flown since 2012, and would be Lucky #13 on a C6-5.

The flight was slightly strange, as the Lamprey took a pronounced kink to the left off the pad.  It wasn't an issue with the flight as it topped out around the 800' mark before crossing the field to recover just behind the pads.  I thought it might have tossed the launch lug, but it was exactly where it was supposed to be when I picked it up.

My final flight on the day would be the Estes Phoenix Bird on a C6-5.  The Phoenix Bird was another on my list of five years or more since the last flight, which in this case was in 2014.  

The Phoenix Bird left the pad heading left and out.  Way out.  I thought I was going to have to make a trip through the fence to recover it, but it surprised everyone by drifting quickly back our way at ejection.  While the LCO was starting to tell about the next flight in line, the Phoenix Bird hung itself over the cyclone fence.  There was much rejoicing.

So, my hard work on the day left me at 193 flights on the year and a bit more than two months to get to my goal of 200 on the year.  Our next club launch should be in the corn, which should make seven a doable number.  We were scheduled to fly in the corn this week, but the crops on the field changed plans at the last minute.  The good news is that most of my birds are prepped if we're on the big field.